by Judy | Oct 1, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes
It’s raspberry heaven around here. Our ever bearing raspberries have stepped up to the plate, so to speak. They have been enjoying the fantastically wonderful fall weather almost as much as we have. Our warm days here in Wisconsin are quickly coming to a close but until the first frost there will be more raspberries to pick! We have been appreciating raspberry banana fruit smoothies with a taste of aronia berries and cocoa as our afternoon pick me up. We...
by Judy | Sep 22, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes
This has been a good year for tomatillos (Physalis ixocarpa). Our three plants have produced way more than we need for our few batches of salsa. Tomatillos are also not that easy to give away because a lot of people don’t know what they are, much less what to do with them. They grow like a tomato but the fruit has a loose, papery husk called a calyx that forms first. The fruit swells inside the husk and is ready to harvest about the time it breaks through the...
by Noel | Aug 17, 2014 | CobraHead, Environmental Issues, Gardening, Recipes
Judy made this season’s first salsa yesterday. It’s about as local as you can get. Everything in it is from the garden except the lime. Here’s the recipe: 2 cups chopped cherry tomatoes – red, yellow, orange – most any tomato will work, but the cherry tomatoes, especially the orange Sungolds, give it a particular zing. ¼ c. chopped red onion 3 cloves garlic – chopped finely 1 T. hot pepper (or to taste) – chopped finely ½ c. cilantro – chopped 1 lime –...
by Judy | Aug 16, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes
We spent an extra long weekend in Pittsburgh for the Garden Writers’ Conference, touring public and private gardens, learning what garden writers learn when they go to school, and connecting with old friends and making new ones. When we came back last Tuesday the garden was bursting with produce. The big bowl above is just a small portion of what we’ve harvested in the last couple of days. Of course, I had to make our favorite summer casserole which uses up...
by Judy | Aug 3, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes
For years we grew soft neck garlic – because that’s what we got started with. It’s only been about the past 5 years that we switched to mainly hard neck types. We found a lot of different hard neck varieties at farmers’ markets and garlic festivals that looked intriguing, from small to huge, red to tan and mild to spicy. Each garlic type has an individual flavor. It’s been fun to grow the different types but we’re certainly not connoisseurs. When cooking I’d...
by Noel | Jul 8, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening
I didn’t have the heart to cull out some of my beautiful and healthy tomato starts so I ended up with 78 plants in two beds. My normal planting is 60 plants in two beds so I had to cheat a little on the spacing. I opened up the width across the rows and pushed the plants as far to the edges of the bed as I thought I might get away with. I still came close to a 20″ spacing between plants and that’s close to what I always do. I’d already...
